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Your outlook on life strongly depends on the quality of life you have to look forward to. It's hard to feel optimistic when you see a life of dependency in front of you. If you want her to have to more positive outlook try to allow her to live her life her way as much as possible. Having your life depend on someone's time and kindness can be a very scary thing.
To answer the original question: my business partner loaned money to someone who didn't pay it back and forced me to have to start all over with absolutely nothing. If it wasn't for my mother and sister I would have been homeless. Thanks to their generosity, I know what family truly is and that has given me the motivation I needed to stop feeling sorry for myself and start over.
Your outlook on life strongly depends on the quality of life you have to look forward to. It's hard to feel optimistic when you see a life of dependency in front of you. If you want her to have to more positive outlook try to allow her to live her life her way as much as possible. Having your life depend on someone's time and kindness can be a very scary thing.
To answer the original question: my business partner loaned money to someone who didn't pay it back and forced me to have to start all over with absolutely nothing. If it wasn't for my mother and sister I would have been homeless. Thanks to their generosity, I know what family truly is and that has given me the motivation I needed to stop feeling sorry for myself and start over.
Yes, I suppose you are right. Getting older must be scary and frustrating.
Thank goodness for your family...I suppose your business is up and successful again! Congratulations!
I cared for a lot of older people in my family because of well..I dont know..They wanted me to do thier shopping and cleaning because no one else did it right. Watching how other people treated them like some sort of mommy or just rushing them along...It annoyed me...It felt pushy..too fast. In person I am quiet and listen (imagine that..lol) But I think thats what older ailing people like best. Having it the way they want. Whenever my grandma was blue it was because she missed everyone that she knew that had passed. I just let her cry about it to me. She didnt even cry in person at her husbands funeral as she is one of those tough graceful old fashioned types. Wouldnt want to muss her make-up. Afterwards we would watch some Tv and just sit there together silent and after that tension of tears washed away we would head to the park for a drive and blast music on the stereo (grandma level blasting not crazy) and sing loudly and badly big band and dance songs from her era. Those days ended in tears of laughter because we would both forget words and make them up.
But I guess you just have to listen to find what makes her feel alive. And sometimes they just need to be sour and sad to ferment a self spawned happiness.
I think the thing that hit you was different because of the child and you were younger. There is a time when older people (from what I noticed) just get really sad and they know they are going to pass and start remembering things from long ago, asking you to sort thier things with them...It is hard to deal with. *Hugs to you*
Mine happened early. I was 16 and the fourth of four children. I was a junior and beginning to think about colleges. I had really good test scores and good grades. However, there were 20% interest rates and my parents, an architect and a real estate agent, just couldn't afford to send me to college. If I wanted to go, I had to pay my freight.
So, I got a job and started to work. And work. And work. I went to school, went to work, and worked until ten. I worked weekends, holidays and summer. The day after my graduation, I worked a double at Arby's. I mowed grass, did inventory, and helped people move. I won a partial scholarship and received student grants. I worked a 40-hour week job during college, and gave drum lessons on the side. I hocked my drum set and sold my plasma. Sometimes I wished that I could have had the same kind of social life other kids did, but I learned a lot about myself during that time. Hard work just has never bothered me since then.
After I finished my Master's degree, my father dropped dead, and left my mother with $10,000 in life insurance. So I shelved my career plans once again and worked a couple of different jobs, one for me and the other for her until she could get started on a career selling real estate.
What did I learn from all that? Hard work won't kill you. And sometimes you just have to sacrifice your fun to do what's best for yourself or your family.
I cared for a lot of older people in my family because of well..I dont know..They wanted me to do thier shopping and cleaning because no one else did it right. Watching how other people treated them like some sort of mommy or just rushing them along...It annoyed me...It felt pushy..too fast. In person I am quiet and listen (imagine that..lol) But I think thats what older ailing people like best. Having it the way they want. Whenever my grandma was blue it was because she missed everyone that she knew that had passed. I just let her cry about it to me. She didnt even cry in person at her husbands funeral as she is one of those tough graceful old fashioned types. Wouldnt want to muss her make-up. Afterwards we would watch some Tv and just sit there together silent and after that tension of tears washed away we would head to the park for a drive and blast music on the stereo (grandma level blasting not crazy) and sing loudly and badly big band and dance songs from her era. Those days ended in tears of laughter because we would both forget words and make them up.
But I guess you just have to listen to find what makes her feel alive. And sometimes they just need to be sour and sad to ferment a self spawned happiness.
I think the thing that hit you was different because of the child and you were younger. There is a time when older people (from what I noticed) just get really sad and they know they are going to pass and start remembering things from long ago, asking you to sort thier things with them...It is hard to deal with. *Hugs to you*
You are right. We were going through pictures from her childhood, her fathers childhood and even some of her grandparents. We were sorting them, writing on the backs and she was so happy .But then she came to a pic with all of her cousins and siblings and she said "It is odd to know I am the only one in this picture who is still living." That was 4 months ago and she will not pick up another one.
My aunt was also a huge jerk to her 2 weeks ago...she was moving back out west and when she came to see my grandmother my aunt said "We will never see each other again" and left!
So, taking care of her has made me more introspective than before and I watch her and wonder what could have been different...
I think the most life changing event in my life was the birth of my niece. I couldn't believe how much I loved her, it was crazy. Also, a new baby really changes how you see the world, everything is brand new.
When I was helping out with my great grandmother she was very unhappy because she was confused and scared and embarrassed about being cared for. I spent one day with her watching old movies, going through photo albums and just talking about old times. She had Alzheimer's, so she was confused, but she remembered her childhood and youth. I also washed and fixed her hair and put makeup on her and painted her nails, she had been in bed so long and she was embarrassed to have "strangers" visiting her looking a mess. I treasure the memory of those days now that she's gone.
Your outlook on life strongly depends on the quality of life you have to look forward to. It's hard to feel optimistic when you see a life of dependency in front of you. If you want her to have to more positive outlook try to allow her to live her life her way as much as possible. Having your life depend on someone's time and kindness can be a very scary thing.
To answer the original question: my business partner loaned money to someone who didn't pay it back and forced me to have to start all over with absolutely nothing. If it wasn't for my mother and sister I would have been homeless. Thanks to their generosity, I know what family truly is and that has given me the motivation I needed to stop feeling sorry for myself and start over.
Huh. Your business partner did the same thing mine did, only with a lot more money. It wasn't exactly a big deal at all, it's just I can feel about 1/100th of your resentment with my annoyance. In my case it was only a thousand bucks, but it was given to our landlord for the office when we had already given our notice that we were leaving at the end of next month so we didn't have to pay for that month, as it was already paid (first and last month). The guy said he needed the money, and would repay our deposit at the end of the month. Before that time happened, he up and disappeared. I mean all his stuff was gone, his business closed down, he was GONE. He was in the mortgage business. He took the business next to ours for another $1,000, haha, so it's petty cash in a sense but it was just annoying because I told my business partner not to give him that money because there was no legal reason to do so and it's not like he was our friend. I didn't understand the point. But there went a thousand bucks. In your case, obviously, that's really bad. I think I will stick without business partners in the future -- investors on individual projects, ok, but business partner in my corporation? No thanks...
As to this thread, I don't know, everyone is shaped by the negative experiences they have I think more so than the positive ones. Or in other words the lows make the highs seem better, I guess. It's nice to wish happy times and sunshine on everyone, but I frankly am glad that I had to go through a few rough patches otherwise I fear that if I ever ran into one later in life I would have no idea what to do because my emotional growth and mental strength would have been stunted. I, however, would rather have not gone through losing a parent when I was only 23, that was not cool to say the least. But the other couple of rough patches I had toughened me up and I think I owe my strength to those tough times. Nietzsche wrote, "One must need to be strong -- otherwise one will never become strong" and was the originator of the saying, "Whatever does not kill me makes me stronger." He also wrote that the overman (the ultimate in human achievement, essentially) "... turns all of his injuries into strengths, that which does not kill him makes him stronger, he is superman." So I'm a fan of taking my beatings and using them to my advantage. A life of ease and comfort is not a life that forces you to become someone of character or someone who can handle adversity and triumph over long odds.
To me, it's much life weight-lifting. One thing that's fun about seemingly such a brute force, "unintelligent" activity is that you can set goals and accomplish them, lifting ever more weight as you progress if you work hard at it, and it gives you the constant feeling of overcoming adversity in a more regular, everyday activity that is good for your health. With the feeling that you can keep doing more, you feel your power is growing, even if it's power of a relatively small nature. Well, when I've had times where I was pushed to my limits, as far as the amount of work I had to do or what I had to deal with in my life, that made me realize how high those limits are and how much I can accomplish if I really set out to do so. That's a great feeling because you know for the future when you have to go through tough times, you've done it before -- maybe even harder and more trying times -- and you triumphed last time, so you believe you can do it again.
In times past, after all, great swords of great warriors could only be forged under great heat
In my younger days, trying to be a stand up guy and help out a friend of a friend who supposedly was beat up by the boyfriend of a girl he was seeing, it ended up being he got beat up for trying to take over that guy's drug selling territory and we all got ambushed in a shoot out. Nobody got hurt but it was a very scary situation in which led me to conclude do not stick your neck out for ANYBODY if you want to live longer.
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Whew, that was easy!
Please let the poor woman have her remaining days in peace!
